Going Home

I am headed back to Calgary today. My shoulder is still in pain. I leave behind my Mom and Ray, three of my children, my two very best friends and other friends too. I leave behind my cousins and my Aunt Margaret, other family too. I leave behind my boat, the sea and my life upon it. I leave behind the beauty and wonder of coast and mountains. Yet I am surprised by my feelings.

I am surprised that I am looking forward to going home. Yes, home. Calgary has become home. I am not sure when it happened but I most certainly know how. I left a marriage where I felt completely unvalued and in arriving in Calgary was almost immediately accepted into a community where people saw me for who I was and what I was, and liked me anyway. I found a place where neither who I am nor what I am was judged nor ridiculed, where my decisions were accepted as mine to make, where my life's experience and wisdom was valued and respected.

Still I am surprised by my equanimity in leaving those I love and this place I love. It is not that I love it less nor will I ever get over missing those I love whom I leave behind. The pain of leaving is nowhere near what I expected. Perhaps I have turned a page in my life. It is possible you know, for me to grow and change even as I enter the last months of my life. It is possible that, in finding a home in Calgary, I am comfortable leaving my home in BC. Perhaps I really left this home a long time ago. Perhaps I left it emotionally long before I finally made the horrendously difficulty decision to leave my wife. Maybe that is why leaving today is not a moment of sadness but a moment of expectation.

This place has always been precious to me. I come alive at sea and feel truly a part of the ocean. I am a water person and there is no water so vast as the Pacific. BC is one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, of places on earth. Summers are warm and sunny, but not hot nor humid. Fall is gentle and winter is mild. Spring starts early and but for the rain would be a gentle slide back into summer. There are lots of reasons for me to want to stay here.

Yet I am going, happily, willingly, back on the road to Calgary. One of my friends, one of my Calgary friends who lives once again in Vancouver, said it the best. She said "Sail if you can sail. If it fails, sell the boat and go back to Calgary. You are happier there." Despite all the odds against it, it would appear she is correct. I am happier at home; Calgary is home now.